Reading Journal 2023: The Last Unicorn
Author: Peter S. Beagle
A fantasy quest novel in classic form. Took me straight back to a childhood filled with the stories like The Never Ending Story, Narnia, The Princess’ Bride and Coopers The Dark is Rising.
One thing that distinguishes Beales fantasy epic is just how small it feels on the surface. This is, i think, by design, allowing the scale to open up underneath in expected ways by way of the simple joys of the stories details, filled as it is with wonderful creatures, simple questions and longings, kingdoms and threats.
If I had to boil the story down into a simple descriptive, it could be contained in the word “hopeful”. Not unlike The Never Ending Story, this hopeful spirit emerges from the darkest places, unveiling the sorts of heros made in the throes of struggle and suffering. The unicorns quest to figure out what happened to the rest of the unicorns is met with moments of transformation that come from learning the art of sadness and pain. And yet this does not strip the world of true joy and beauty. The book becomes a pervasive argument both for leaning a deliberate embrace of reality as it is, and also by a greater magic that informs and is reforming such a reality towards its true identity.
It could be said that this exercise is a grand philosophical metaphor that explores what it means to be human. I think it is fairer to say that it gives us an imagination to see this undeniable humanness as more than merely something that we can observe and experience on the surface, a product of a material reality that bears out more suffering and sadness than we might care to admit. The story is a reminder that there is a reality that is bigger than these simple matters of perspective, one with the power to both inform this life and to liberate it, one that beckons us forward on a journey destined to grow our imagination for what this thing we call reality truly is.
The Stories of my Life 